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A man in New York become the first casualty of Pokémon Go after crashing his car into a tree while playing the game of his phone. It is only a matter of time before someone got hit by a car while burying his or her face in the phone trying to capture a fictional monster.
Last week, an employer in the UK issued a memo warning staff not to play the game or they will be fired.
While a memo maybe good enough for getting the message across in a small organisation, for global organisations such as Boeing, it means introducing a policy change.
Like many workers around the world, staff at Boeing were thrilled by the new game. A girl had wrote on Twitter about her father who works for Boeing is planning to upgrade his phone data plan to play the game.
my dad: everyone I work with at Boeing is updating to unlimited data to play Pokemon GO
— Jessica (@charmandrs) July 13, 2016
The news was shared on Twitter.
My grandpa txted me an ss of an email he got from Boeing (his job) today telling employees to stop playing PokemonGO on their network lol — samy ke (@samylol) July 14, 2016
This shows that the problem with gaming at work is not only a distraction but also causing safety concerns especially in a company like Boeing where employees might have a high chance of walking into machinery and hurt themselves.
“Due to the popularity of Pokémon Go and users not being able to make the conscious decision to not play Pokémon at work – we had a near miss for a user getting hurt while playing the game. Due to that, we had to react and disable the Pokémon app from all devices – we had over 100 active installs of that application. The blacklist removes all that we consider to be carrier bloatware and now also the Pokémon Go app,” Boeing wrote in a memo seen by 9to5Mac.
The obvious loop hole in the policy is that employees can still play the game on their own device instead of using a company device. The corporate communication department of Boeing did not respond to an email sent by Human Resources to for comments on the new policy before the deadline of the publication of the story.
Several museums have already had to send out announcements banning the use of the game out of respect. A spokesman for the Auschwitz memorial in Poland wrote on Twitter: "Do not allow playing #PokemonGO on the site of our Memorial and similar places. It's disrespectful on many levels.", the itv reports.
The Arlington National Cemetery in the USA also sent a similar message to visitors through Twitter,
We do not consider playing "Pokemon Go" to be appropriate decorum on the grounds of ANC. We ask all visitors to refrain from such activity.
— Arlington Cemetery (@ArlingtonNatl) July 12, 2016
